The Need for a New Trio: PM, PMM, and Growth
As the development cycle shrinks in the wake of AI, the noise in SaaS will be deafening. This new reality demands the need for a new trio in product to emerge with a different focus.
Hi fam,
The old trio (PM, Engineering, Design) is no longer enough for successful SaaS products.
There. I said it.
This line of thinking didn’t start from yesterday. The seeds were sown 7 years ago, when I was part of two key product launches with contrasting results. I’ll unpack this anecdote in a bit.
In today’s edition, we’ll explore why it’s time for B2B SaaS products to assemble a new trio.
No, not just for traction or growth. But also for survival.
Here’s what is in store:
a product launch story that inspired my thinking
why a new product trio is needed in the age of AI
the common charter the trio needs to subscribe to
the individual domains each member of the trio owns
how their influence covers the entire org
how to introduce the trio in practice, especially when product marketing isn’t well understood in the organization
I touched on this topic in a recent podcast episode with Aakash Gupta as well.
You can catch that episode below or read this edition of the Product Growth newsletter.
Before we get into it, a quick survey:
A tale of two products
Back in 2018, I was part of 2 key product launches for Bayt.com.
While both offerings were forged in the same company, they met with different destinies.
Both products:
had been years in the making.
solved real customer problems we'd validated through countless interviews.
had passionate internal champions and solid technical execution.
Yet one generated a five-figure enterprise deal before launch, while the other was struggling to gain traction for a year despite being the leadership favorite.
The tale of these two products follows the point I’m trying to prove in this newsletter edition: the dire need for a committee that thinks beyond delivery.
Evalufy was our video assessment tool.
It was a well-crafted solution for hiring at scale that our HR team had adopted internally. Leadership loved it and would use it repeatedly. I recall attending a mandatory training course at Bayt and then undergoing an Evalufy assessment every few sessions, which was sent by the CEO himself.
The concept was simple. Create a survey that accepts videos as a response.
During that time, video screening was in high demand, and there were only a few players in the market.
But despite the favorable environment, twelve months post-launch, Evalufy hadn't moved the revenue needle.
The problem wasn't the product.
The problem was everything else.
In our excitement, we had somewhat confused our positioning.
We wanted it to be an “everything” tool for HR use cases. It started as a screening tool. But then we veered into making it a general-purpose tool that could be used for capturing employee opinions, conducting training, and administering tests. The sales pitch was all over the place.
Yes, use case inflation. The original sin of product marketing.
Moreover, the product was initially built with a product-led mindset. We debated endlessly whether it should stay a standalone product or be integrated deeply with Bayt.com.
While the product was fully self-serve, we opted to keep it sales-led. There was no free trial or sign-up link. Why? We were super comfortable with sales-led (a model we had mastered for a decade), and we wanted to play to our strengths.
That was also why our pricing strategy missed the mark. Despite it being an easy, lean software, we were so married to enterprise plays that we prioritized annual pricing with a heavy price tag. We later switched to monthly pricing, which opened up the funnel but the initial direction didn’t help.
All in all, in retrospect, a product like Evalufy would have benefited from a different line of product marketing/GTM thinking.
It’s not that companies didn’t show interest. But due to one or the other challenges cited above, it didn’t ignite pipeline the way we had hoped for.
On the hand, we had AfterHire - an employee onboarding solution.
How should I describe it?
AfterHire was this complex, sophisticated Voltron of a product. It involved an intricate workflow builder, several layers, and a rather non-sexy UI.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t do its job.
Every company in the MENA region we spoke to had its own employee onboarding process, and AfterHire was built like a tank that was able to tackle all kinds of convoluted workflows.
Having said that, it wasn’t self-serve at all. It needed a dedicated white-glove service for setup. Little did we know that turned out to be an advantage later on.
Now, here’s the kicker: AfterHire secured a five-figure deal with a major Middle Eastern bank three months before its release. I mean a signed contract with one-third of the money in the bank.
And shortly after rollout, we'd signed ten enterprise clients, including a telecom giant in Qatar, a bank in Riyadh, and a massive exhibition organizer in the UAE. It made its mark on the PnL.
AfterHire had the same resource constraints as Evalufy. Both were built by equally capable teams and on a similar tech stack.
AfterHire had three things that Evalufy didn’t:
The positioning was unambiguous: a cloud-based onboarding platform with a custom workflow builder and highly localized white-glove support. The story integrated seamlessly with our flagship ATS product.
Even before the product was sold, the product team had excited the sales team with the prospect of huge expansion deals.
We executed a variant of account-based targeting for enterprise prospects who required this exact solution. We didn’t have Clay back then, but we revisited all the RFPs in the years gone past that referenced an onboarding requirement and reached out to those companies. It worked wonders.
Two products. Same company. Same audience. Same resource constraints.
Different outcomes.
Here's what I learned: product quality is table stakes, but product success demands specialized expertise in positioning, messaging, and systematic growth optimization.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
Fast forward, and this lesson feels more urgent today than ever.
The AI revolution is commoditizing code creation. Microsoft is reducing headcount while increasing output through AI development tools. GitHub Copilot, Claude Artifacts, and similar platforms are democratizing software creation in ways that seemed impossible just months ago.
When building becomes easier, everything else becomes more important.
Don’t get me wrong.
The traditional PM-Engineer-Designer trio remains relevant for creating the right product. But the old guard needs help.
At least in B2B SaaS-land, especially for companies moving upmarket, that trio is not sufficient for product success.
The new reality demands a new triad that I’m advocating.
A strategic partnership between Product Manager, Product Marketer and Growth Owner.
The architecture of modern product success
All three roles are unified with a common mission:
create a desirable product that solves a repeatable problem,
deliver it to the right customers at scale, and
create sustainable business value.
But what does this mean in practice?
There needs to be a unified charter where all three roles carry a shared understanding about six critical aspects:
One Vision: Everyone must grasp what dent the product is making in the universe and why it matters.
Hierarchy of Pain: Which customer problems take priority and for which specific personas? It's easy to slip into solving a myriad of use cases like we did with Evalufy. The PM might know users struggle with manual workflows, but the PMM needs to understand which pain point resonates most with decision-makers, while the Growth Owner identifies which problem drives the strongest purchase intent.
Magic Moment: What are the 2-3 biggest "aha moments" that make users fall in love with the product? What must all three protect in the product, amplify in messaging, and feature in experiments?
Metrics that Matter: Which numbers actually move the business forward? Revenue metrics matter to Growth, but Product needs to track feature adoption, while PMMs monitor win rates, sales velocity, and pipeline. The trio must understand how these interconnect.
The Playing Field: Who are the real competitors and how do we differentiate? This goes beyond feature comparisons to include positioning, pricing strategies, and market messaging that the entire trio can leverage.
Adoption Barriers: What's the most common objection the team needs to overcome? For a product like RB2B, that could be compliance and integrations. For Lovable, it might be credit overuse and error rates. Each role needs to understand these friction points to address them effectively.
Without this foundation, you end up with three well-intentioned professionals pulling in different directions, each optimizing for their own metrics while missing the bigger picture.
Clear Ownership Without Committee Chaos
While the mission is unified, each role has its domain where it "calls the shots."
I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting "product by committee." The trio should be aligned, not become a democracy with veto powers.
The Product Manager owns the "what" and "how".
This means feature development, engineering coordination, and user experience design. They're the bridge between customer problems and technical solutions, ensuring the product delivers genuine value while maintaining technical excellence.
Yes, the introduction of AI has equipped them with new capabilities, such as rapid prototyping and workflow automation. As more companies invest in “AI-first” products, it might also demand some technical skills. But the essence of the role remains rooted in the intersection of the customer, business, and product.
The Product Marketing Manager owns the "who" and "why".
This means market positioning, competitive differentiation, customer messaging, and go-to-market strategy. They translate product capabilities into customer value propositions and ensure that market readiness aligns with product readiness.
The Growth Owner is the catalyst and accelerator.
They're focused on user acquisition optimization, retention mechanics, conversion funnel analysis, and behavioral experimentation. They transform product-market fit into scalable, sustainable growth engines.
Influence beyond the tech corner
The traditional PM-Engineer-Designer trio, while effective at building products, was primarily perceived as the “tech department” and clubbed into that sphere by the rest of the stakeholder matrix.
I can’t generalize this, but in my experience, the original trio’s influence would taper out pretty quickly beyond engineering, design, legal, ops, and perhaps marketing teams. They have a well-documented love-hate relationship with B2B sales.
But the new strategic trio fundamentally changes the power dynamic by positioning itself “closer” to the organizational center, not the periphery.
Each role brings distinct influence networks that create comprehensive organizational coverage:
Product Managers command respect from engineering, design, and research teams that determine what gets built and how.
Product Marketing Managers hold influence with sales, marketing, and customer success teams that drive revenue generation.
Growth Owners bridge multiple worlds, leveraging data teams while influencing both product development and marketing execution.
I found this quote from the Gartner Leadership Vision 2025 Report insightful:
Fifty percent of tech CMOs and product marketing leaders indicate that a lack of effective collaboration with revenue functions (e.g., sales, account management or customer success) is a top barrier to reaching customer expansion goals. Conflicting perspectives and siloed data and analytics stacks add to the difficulties, and organizations that don’t address these challenges will fail to meet customer needs.
Together, they form a wide radius of influence that touches every critical function in a modern SaaS company.
This also creates a unique superpower i.e. the ability to evangelize both product vision and go-to-market strategy simultaneously across the organization.
In multi-product environments, this becomes even more critical.
The trio influences both vertical decisions (product-specific strategies) and horizontal decisions (cross-product initiatives, resource allocation). They become the connective tissue that ensures product development, market positioning, and growth optimization move in lockstep.
Making It Work in Practice
“Cute idea, Aatir. How do you put it into practice, though?”
This framework sounds interesting on paper, but implementing it is a different beast, especially if your organization is still not clear about product marketing’s true essence.
I took this transition journey at vFairs, and I can share what we went through and my suggestions.
It starts with fierce internal education.
If you're new to product marketing or product management, begin with internal education across the entire organization, including leadership.
Here’s what Gartner’s Leader Vision 2025 Report says:
“Despite being a highly strategic and operational role, product marketing is often seen as a support function only. Leadership misconceptions about product marketing’s role and impact are one of the main reasons why product marketers fail.”
Source
Last year, I delivered a training workshop to a European energy company where we mandated that the CEO sit in as well. It was an eye-opener for them to learn about the domains PMs and PMMs work in.
Without higher-ups understanding what coordinated launches and synced GTM efforts mean, it's nearly impossible to get buy-in.
Need content for this? Check these resources out:
Emily Kramer’s article: We’ve been defining product marketing wrong
Here's the step-by-step approach that we took. Yes, it was much uglier than the neat bullet points I’m depicting below, but the goal is to visualize the trajectory:
Phase 1: Build the PM-PMM foundation
Cross-educate both roles on each other's responsibilities and constraints. This can be simple training sessions or group discussions about what each other thinks the other does.
Establish early sync points in the development cycle before features get locked into sprints. PMMs enter the fold far too late. I also think “handoffs” from PM to PMM is criminal. The PMM needs to be involved before the sprint is finalized to be able to absorb the necessary context.
Use structured frameworks like SPACER to ensure consistent alignment on story, pricing, abilities, competitive edge, end user, and roadmap. I’ve written on this here.
Conduct internal launches before external ones to practice unified messaging. Before thinking about activating marketing campaigns or sales motions, work together on motivating stakeholders internally with the same vocabulary, messaging and intensity. Partner in townhalls if you have to.
Phase 2: Invest in the partnership
Then, let PMMs plan external launches together with PMs vetting sales enablement materials and PMMs sharing competitive intelligence
Create shared accountability for launch success metrics, whether that’s around adoption metrics, qualitative feedback, or early CES scores.
Let PMMs inform PMs about market feedback while PMs educate PMMs on technical constraints.
Phase 3: Insert growth only when you’re ready
Don't rush to add growth too early.
Elena Verna said this on Lenny’s podcast: “Wait on hiring a head of growth until you have strong product-market fit, at least $1 million in ARR, sufficient user data for meaningful experiments, and ideally some self-serve revenue.”
The same rule applies in this trio.
Adding growth before this foundation exists often creates more confusion than acceleration.
Let’s take a pause here.
Some leaders eventually realize the importance of the PM-PMM function but consider growth an unnecessary, “forced” addition in this trio I’m proposing.
“Growth is a good-to-have, not a core function.”
Alright.
Let me provide you with some concrete examples of initiatives that can seriously move bottom-of-funnel metrics, which typically require the expertise of a growth owner (not a PM or PMM) to orchestrate and deliver.
Working backwards from highest-value customers to identify the exact content consumption and trial behavior patterns, then creating targeted campaigns to replicate these paths for similar prospects.
A Growth Owner would identify which integrations (like Slack, Salesforce, or Zapier connections) correlate with highest account expansion, then build automated campaigns that encourage existing users to connect these tools while simultaneously sending targeted invites to their connected teammates with personalized onboarding flows.
if a product is getting leads in the thousands, then a growth owner would work with sales leadership to build a predictive model to score leads and prioritize automatic sales outreach to locate the biggest opportunities.
A growth owner would attempt to expand sales by creating cross-product campaigns e.g. timely contextual in-app prompts, navigational changes, email campaigns, webinar invites etc.
In PLG products, a growth owner would analyze user behavior during free trials where the risk of abandonment increases. They could then experiment by putting these users into a “rescue sequence” e.g. sending them a custom demo data, or getting them to talk to a support rep or offer extended trials. An experiment can change bottom-of-funnel conversion rates.
I could go on. But I hope you catch my drift.
These experiments require a thorough analysis of funnel metrics and user behavior patterns. PMs and PMMs provide context but may not have the necessary skillset to design a polished experiment like a growth owner does.
At the same time, the growth owner won’t be able to execute any of this without input from a PM or PMM.
If they don’t get bandwidth from the product team, none of this experiment-doodling matters.
If they don’t understand the ICP, sales messages, or general positioning from PMM, they’ll keep theoretically sound but practically bogus campaigns.
Phase 4: Establish trio rhythms
Focus experiments on retention first, then acquisition, then expansion. I prefer this because the feedback loop from existing customers (especially high ICP-fit ones) is fairly quick. Validating product launch efficacy with them is a lot more straightforward.
Create periodic interaction cadences and dedicated communication channels. No, I’m not fan of new meetings either. But you need a regulated forum where you can bounce ideas and exchange discovery notes regularly. In our sessions, we go from unpacking industry reports all the way to reviewing metrics.
Most importantly, have the trio present to leadership together regularly, covering not just roadmap updates but customer impact, market feedback, and pipeline effects
The transition is challenging but possible.
At vFairs, we started without a PMM function in 2020. Initially, I played that role while building the formal structure.
We introduced our first product marketing manager into the marketing team, established launch processes, and created positioning frameworks. The early content often sat unused, but persistence and iteration eventually won over sales and customer success teams.
A year later, we formalized the PMM function and began the harder work of building PM-PMM relationships.
PMs were used to working in silos, so we had to demonstrate value through concrete deliverables and leadership alignment.
Only recently did we add a growth owner with expertise in SEO, paid acquisition, and lead generation.
We already saw how this impacted our product launches. One recent one around our facial recognition check-in product worked wonders. The messaging remained consistent throughout the team, we had solid agreement on value props, the launch was framed correctly. The pipeline numbers for that launch were unprecedented.
FAQs
When I present the new trio concept in different social circles, it’s met with unhinged skepticism, especially from leadership.
I won't say the model is universal. No framework can boast that.
But I’m willing to share a few thoughts on some common inquiries:
Q: My organization doesn't have the budget for all three roles. What should I do?
Start with the PM-PMM foundation first, as this partnership creates the most immediate impact on launch success and market positioning. You can add the growth function later. If you can’t afford a PMM, upskill your PM to understand the basics of messaging, positioning, and GTM mechanics.
This is far from ideal, but it is the least a product team should invest in.
Q: Can the PMM role be handled by the PM initially?
While a PM can wear multiple hats temporarily, the skill sets are fundamentally different. I’ve seen this work out in lean teams, but not when the product starts hitting > $1M ARR scale. It’s unfair for PMs to have so much on their plate.
PMs focus on building the right product while PMMs focus on selling it to the right market. You could get away with a PMM consultant for a short while but an in-house PMM is a must-have eventually.
Q: What if our company is purely product-led growth (PLG)?
I come from a sales-led B2B SaaS background, so I can’t say I’ve tested this.
However, while the execution may look different, the core principles and unified charter would remain the same.
I imagine the Growth Owner becomes more central to the trio (and perhaps enters the fold far earlier than needed in B2B Saas). They would focus heavily on in-product conversion and self-serve funnels, while the PMM role might be lighter on sales enablement and heavier on user education and onboarding messaging.
Q: How do you measure the success of this trio approach?
Track both individual role metrics and shared outcomes.
Individual metrics might include feature adoption (PM), sales velocity (PMM), and conversion rates (Growth).
Shared metrics should include North Star product metrics, feature adoption rates, competitive win rates, customer acquisition cost, and overall revenue impact from new product initiatives. The metrics would obviously vary from org to org.
The bottom line
If there’s only one thing you want to take away from this newsletter, it’s this:
The era of building in isolation is over. The traditional PM-Engineer-Designer trio served us well for product development, but sustainable success now demands a strategic partnership between Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, and Growth Owner.
In my mind, the implementation path is clear: start with education, build the PM-PMM foundation first, add growth strategically after achieving product-market fit, and establish regular rhythms for collaboration and leadership reporting.
If your product team is still operating with the old model, it's time to introspect whether you're optimizing for building features or building businesses.
The companies that master this transition will separate themselves from those still thinking that “great products sell themselves”.
Till next time,
Aatir
That was a deep and great reading, thanks for sharing it!
What an epic take!